Over 50 insight­ful and fun mem­bers of the world­wide Sharp­Brains com­mu­nity had the oppor­tu­nity to gather in DC, New York and San Fran­cisco last month in order to meet in per­son –often for the first time!- and to dis­cuss next steps to drive mean­ing­ful inno­va­tion in the brain health and fit­ness space.

It is our plea­sure to invite Sharp­Brains Sum­mit par­tic­i­pants to con­tribute to, and to learn from, this grow­ing net­work, by ask­ing them to please: Read the rest of this entry »

Reminder:—> Join Live Q&A with Alvaro Fer­nan­dez by click­ing HERE, today Novem­ber 15th at 11am Pacific Time/ 2pm East­ern Time. Chat about the present and future of cog­ni­tion, learn­ing, brain train­ing, tech­nol­ogy and more with Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, co-founder of SharpBrains.com and co-author of The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness. You can also learn more about the Brain Fit­ness Q&A Series.

Front Porch Cen­ter for Tech­nol­ogy Inno­va­tion and Well­be­ing Receives Grant for the Model eHealth Com­mu­nity for Aging (press release):

- ” The Front Porch Cen­ter for Tech­nol­ogy Inno­va­tion and Well­be­ing (Front Porch Cen­ter), a 501©(3) founded on the belief that tech­nol­ogy inno­va­tion plays a vital role in enhanc­ing well­be­ing, was awarded eHealth equip­ment val­ued at approx­i­mately $207,000 through the Model eHealth Com­mu­ni­ties ini­tia­tive at UC Davis Health Sys­tem and the Read the rest of this entry »

The New York Times has recently pub­lished sev­eral very good and seem­ingly unre­lated articles…let’s try and con­nect some dots. What if we ques­tioned the very premise behind nam­ing some class­rooms the “class­rooms of the future” sim­ply because they have been adding tech­nol­ogy in lit­er­ally mind­less ways? What if the Edu­ca­tion of the Future (some­times also referred to as “21st Cen­tury Skills”) wasn’t so much about the How we edu­cate but about the What we want stu­dents to learn and develop, apply­ing what we know about mind and brain to the needs they are likely to face dur­ing the next 50–70 years of their lives? Read the rest of this entry »

In recent years, we have wit­nessed the begin­nings of a rev­o­lu­tion in edu­ca­tion.  Tech­nol­ogy has fun­da­men­tally altered the way we do many things in daily life, but it is just start­ing to make head­way in chang­ing the way we teach.  Just as tele­vi­sion shows like Sesame Street enhanced the pas­sive learn­ing of infor­ma­tion for kids by teach­ing in a fun for­mat, elec­tronic games offer to greatly enhance the way kids and adults are taught by actively engag­ing them in the process. Read the rest of this entry »

A cou­ple of very inter­est­ing recent announce­ments show (in a mil­i­tary con­text) how well-targeted brain train­ing can com­ple­ment and aug­ment exist­ing approaches, both to help “nor­mal” and “clin­i­cal” pop­u­la­tions, in ways that silo-based, rear-mirror think­ing often misses: Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Note: This arti­cle is excerpted from Longevity Rules: How to Age Well Into the Future,  a com­pendium 0f 34 excel­lent essays where lead­ing longevity experts help pol­i­cy­mak­ers and the pub­lic bet­ter under­stand the aging expe­ri­ence. In the essay below, Joseph Cough­lin, the Direc­tor of MIT Age­Lab, explores the role that tech­nol­ogy can play in aging well. Copy­right 2010, Eska­ton.

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Aging is not for wimps. While liv­ing longer has become remark­ably com­mon­place, liv­ing well takes a lot of work. Longevity is cre­at­ing new and expanded “jobs” for indi­vid­u­als, fam­i­lies, for­mal care­givers and pub­lic agen­cies. Dur­ing the past decade many have argued that tech­nol­ogy is the answer to aging — with­out really ask­ing what the ques­tion is. This def­i­n­i­tion of the “aging and tech­nol­ogy oppor­tu­nity” is dri­ven by those who are wildly pas­sion­ate about inven­tion, but not flu­ent in the art of inno­va­tion — that is, putting ideas to prac­ti­cal use. The ques­tions that should be asked by pol­i­cy­mak­ers, busi­ness and the aging com­mu­nity are:

• What are the jobs of aging ser­vices that we are try­ing to achieve?
• How might tech­nol­ogy and col­lab­o­ra­tive part­ner­ships accom­plish these tasks or pro­duce supe­rior outcomes?
• Where should pol­i­cy­mak­ers and busi­ness direct their lim­ited resources to cre­atively exploit tech­nol­ogy to enable indi­vid­u­als and fam­i­lies to live bet­ter — not just longer?

Read the rest of this entry »

Mal­prac­tice Method­ol­ogy (New York Times OpEd by Peter Orszag)

Right now, health care is more evidence-free than you might think. And even where evidence-based clin­i­cal guide­lines exist, research sug­gests that doc­tors fol­low them only about half of the time. One esti­mate sug­gests that it takes 17 years on aver­age to incor­po­rate new research find­ings into wide­spread prac­tice. As a result, any clin­i­cal guide­lines that exist often have lim­ited impact. How might we encour­age doc­tors to adopt new evi­dence more quickly?

If this is the case with health care over­all, despite much progress over the last 30–40 years, imag­ine how worse it may be when we talk about brain health, when neu­ro­science and cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science are rel­a­tively more recent disciplines.

This is a key insight to keep in mind as we debate the value and lim­i­ta­tions of inno­v­a­tive brain health solu­tions, espe­cially those that are non-invasive and have no neg­a­tive side effects:  what mat­ters most to actual human beings liv­ing today is how those tools and solu­tions seem to per­form, based on best evi­dence, com­pared to alter­na­tives avail­able today — not com­pared to Pla­tonic ideals about research and prac­tice which may exist in our minds but not in the real, empir­i­cal world. Of course we then need to guide research so that we have bet­ter evi­dence in the future, but progress must occur in par­al­lel and rein­force each other: progress in prac­tice and in research.

The OpEd author then pro­ceeds to defend mal­prac­tice reform as the pri­mary way to do so. This may well be so with health­care as a whole, but when we are talk­ing about brain care I believe his next 2 pro­pos­als are more directly rel­e­vant: Read the rest of this entry »

Quick note: I will be speak­ing at the UCLA Tech­nol­ogy & Aging Con­fer­ence on Fri­day, Octo­ber 29th, in Los Ange­les. Please drop me a line or intro­duce your­self if you are plan­ning to attend.

The Sched­ule fea­tures many good ses­sions, includ­ing one on Brain Fitness:

• Descrip­tion: Grow­ing sci­en­tific evi­dence sug­gests that such strate­gies as phys­i­cal and men­tal exer­cise can improve brain health and cog­ni­tive per­for­mance. This ses­sion will review the lat­est research sup­port­ing brain fit­ness meth­ods, high­light new cog­ni­tive train­ing devices, and dis­cuss the chal­lenge of deter­min­ing the effec­tive­ness of these technologies.
• Speak­ers: Bill Reich­man (Bay­crest), Steven Aldrich (Posit Sci­ence), Gary & Rita Con­si­dine (Garri Pro­duc­tions), Alvaro Fer­nan­dez of (SharpBrains).
• Mod­er­a­tor: Gary Small (UCLA Cen­ter on Aging).

To learn more and reg­is­ter: click Here.

Here you have the July edi­tion of our monthly eNewslet ter cov­er­ing cog­ni­tive health and brain fit­ness top­ics. Please remem ber that you can sub­scribe to receive this free Brain Fit­ness eNewslet­ter by email, using the box in the right column.

Tech­nol­ogy to upgrade brain care: In this exten­sive inter­view, Dr. John Docherty helps con­nect the dots on why new frame­works and tools are a must to put recent brain research to good use. A must read for all pro­fes­sion­als in the field.

Research

Find­ings from NIH Expert Panel: The Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging asked Alvaro Fer­nan­dez to com­ment on the find­ings from a major cog­ni­tive health research review by the National Insti­tutes of Health. Lifestyle still mat­ters, and pro­tec­tive fac­tors against cog­ni­tive decline are led by cog­ni­tive train­ing, phys­i­cal activ­ity and cog­ni­tive engagement.

Sci­en­tific cri­tique of BBC brain train­ing exper­i­ment: Dr. Eliz­a­beth Zelin­ski shares her con­cerns about the April 2010 BBC study, which included sub­stan­tial and unex­plained dropout rates, and ques­tion­able out­come mea­sure­ment and interpretation.

The value of being bilin­gual and build­ing a Cog­ni­tive Reserve to pre­serve learn­ing and mem­ory even in the face of brain dam­age are explored in recent studies.

San Fran­cisco Bay Area study seeks par­tic­i­pants: The Gaz­za­ley Lab at UCSF is look­ing for par­tic­i­pants aged 20–59 to explore the impact of dis­trac­tion and mul­ti­task­ing on per­for­mance across the lifespan.

Inno­va­tion

What impressed Inno­va­tion Awards Judg­ing Panel: Get some insight into what most impressed the Judg­ing Panel about each Win­ner and Final­ist of the 2010 Brain Fit­ness Inno­va­tion Awards.

New — Sharp­Brains’ 2010 Mar­ket Report:  Sharp­Brains’ flag­ship, 207-page, third annual mar­ket report finds con­tin­ued growth for dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies to assess, enhance and treat cognition.

To man­age brain fit­ness through life, we need to put puz­zle pieces together: inno­v­a­tive tools to help us bet­ter mon­i­tor our cog­ni­tive health and take informed action are badly needed.…and already emerging.

The inter­net will fry your brain. Sure: In his lat­est book, Nicholas Carr does a great job high­light­ing the impli­ca­tions of life­long neuro­plasticity, but picks the wrong enemy.

“Seri­ous Games”:  Can video games inspire peo­ple to per­form acts of altru­ism? Kyle Smith reports.

Teasers

Yahoo Opti­cal Illu­sions and teasers: Yahoo! has cre­ated an expanded sec­tion of illu­sions and teasers, and we were glad to con­tribute to it. Enjoy…and have a great summer!